BROOKLYN — Now that Mayor Bloomberg is a lame duck, we will have to get used to that term and its implications. He cannot run for a fourth term, if only because he won’t be able to.

So already, people are stirring around about lame duckery, but I don’t really think it will be as profound and punishing as most people may think.

After all, a strong-willed mayor can penalize and reward just as much as one not locked into the law. Also, it doesn’t seem likely that there will be a strong independent candidate in four years unless it’s Dan Davidoff.

The Democratic field may now have two strong potential candidates in John Liu and Bill de Blasio. But Bloomberg can still do a lot and most assuredly will.

He has already left a mark on city history, and some of his stalled initiatives will become un-stalled. There is one more thing he can do — reform the governance elements of city government by revising the City Charter.

The city is dealing with too many anachronisms. The line of succession makes no sense, and neither really does the position of public advocate. There is, however, a need for an elected city comptroller. The line of succession — the public advocate replaces the mayor if necessary — dates back to the creation of Greater New York in 1898. The position of borough president was created, and the now-defunct Board of Estimate was created to give the separate boroughs some legal clout.

That board worked something like a senate and really had the major financial clout in city government. To balance that, the position of president of the City Council was created, and that person was next in line to be mayor.

The Board of Estimate was finally ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the late 1980s based on the one man-one vote law. The borough president of Staten Island had the same power as the borough president of Brooklyn, despite the difference in population.

I covered every charter revision meeting in Brooklyn and a few in Manhattan, and I can report that the commission came very close to wanting to abolish the president of the City Council. However, the then-holder of that position, Andy Stein, was politically popular and powerful.

So the commission renamed the position as public advocate and kept the line of succession with that position. Commission members shook their heads, but simple politics ruled on that matter.

The mayor should create a new Charter Revision Commission and create a new elected position like vice mayor, the next in line to be mayor. That person could preside over the City Council, like Vice President Biden now does over the U.S. Senate.

The City Council should be expanded, like it was in 1989, to reflect the growing population of the city. There should be a formula established that after every U.S. Census, there will be an automatic expansion of council membership if the numbers click in.

There also should be some laws that strengthen the role of the borough presidents, like some sort of formula of city funds going to the boroughs.

There are many other subjects that can be included in revising the City Charter, and a better city government could be a nifty legacy for Mike Bloomberg. Being a lame duck, he would have no axe to grind.

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